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It was a mewling thing that whined. This thing, that she cradled uncomfortably in the crook of her arm. This squalling babe that wriggled in the wet of her sister’s womb juice and had not yet opened its eyes but cried and cried and cried.
In the curve of its cheeks and the tilt of its nose held the vague shape of her; dear sister, whose steaming cadaver— womb flowered open, now chilled on a table somewhere in the bowels of Moonrise. Gaps of ivory flesh glistened underneath splotched viscera and juxtaposed against her own, Orin suddenly thought: it could pass as mine.
Until it opened its eyes and Orin saw.
Tar-black. The grease of a wine cup runneth over— too big eyes the color of dusk-streaked, just-night. The Chosen of Bane’s eyes.
Her body shivered with the desire to slam the babe into the floor. Whip out Bloodthirst and slip it into the jelly of the newborn babe, string out the vitreous humour of its irises and carve blue into them instead.
It would be so easy, to ruin this wriggling worm. To turn it into corpse-currant. To turn it to Art. Better match the one whose brain Orin had stirred to paste; dear sister, who Father loved and loved and loved with such viciousness. Maybe then Father would love her too— listen for once, to her litanies and see the effort she put into His veneration.
But even now, His voice was strangely silent in her head. No murmurings of culling, no Urge to bring down her knife-hand. Instead there was a tightness at her throat and a low, throbbing in her chest. The burn at the edge of her eyelids. Slowly, she brought herself to run fingers through its already thick mass of hair and drag her nails lightly against its scalp.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend it was hers. Raven hair slipping through fingers like the old days, when Orin was but a child and played at weaving oils into her hair; gathering them into plaits and turning away when she was teased, for spending time on pretty and wasteful things. Memories like mirror shards and iron flints came to her now, of embroidering teardrops on cold corpses, of dinners— the roasted slabs of steaming meat. Grey-blue eyes, peering down at her and callus-padded fingertips, drifting across her cheek…
Melian had always told her she loved her.
She could take the babe— damn the Deal. She could raise the child. She should raise the child. After all, she had snatched the fruit and did it not sit so prettily in the crook of her arm? Red and wet and foul-blooded. The cards were in her hands and she could turn them over as she pleased. What could the Chosen of Bane possibly do in the face of her turn-about ways? Nothing. The Chosen of Myrkul had arbitrated the swap but there was a certain pleasure in having the child in her grasp. Of seizing the culmination of Melian’s desperate efforts: fleeing the Gate to Moonrise and seeking shelter with Ketheric, her face when she saw Orin— her face. A hyena’s cackle tumbled from her mouth.
Her face! How surprise first sparked— realisation dawning before that twisting desolation, that hand hovering over her stomach. Did defiance still not broil in the furrow of her brow, up until Orin’s first knife-swing?
Then that knowing, as all mortal men know. At the end. As Bloodthirst’s sharp tongue licked up the inside of her skull.
If I love you enough, Orin thought to the wailing child, would you be mine?
But of course the child did not reply.